Preserving Your Historic Home

"An important aspect of design is the degree to which the object involves you in its own completion. Some work invites you into itself by not offering a finished, glossy, one-reading-only surface. This is what makes old buildings interesting to me. I think that humans have a taste for things that not only show that they have been through a process of evolution, but which also show they are still part of one. They are not dead yet."

Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn

Older homes like those in Syracuse are unlike anything being built today. The highly skilled craftsmen that once exactingly fit hardwood moldings around windows, doors, ceilings and floors are long gone. They've been replaced with simpler, cheaper materials and techniques.

If your older windows are in good shape, and you have storm windows, new vinyl windows will be only marginally more energy efficient -- and it may take decades to pay back the cost of new windows through energy savings. Meanwhile, you'll be discarding a major part of your home's architectural character.
And think how remarkable it is that those sturdy, double-hung wooden windows have lasted sixty, seventy, eighty years. The vinyl merchants may tell you that vinyl is impervious to the elements. In fact, vinyl slowly looses oils through evaporation -- especially when exposed to sunlight. Over time it starts to shrink, warp and crack. Do you really think those new vinyl windows will still be here in 2080?

With a bit of adjustment and some new rope, your old windows will probably work like new. If you don't have time to do it yourself, companies that install storm windows can often fix and adjust older windows for a fraction of what it would cost to install new windows. But beware, in recent years even the storm window companies have been pushing vinyl more aggressively. They've learned that installing new windows is much more profitable than repairing old ones.

If you have a window or two that is in such bad shape it must be replaced, think about buying quality wooden windows. The major window manufacturers now offer models that can be made to closely approximate the look of your original windows -- with or without double-pane glass.

Plaster Walls. Handmade plaster walls, displaying the slight irregularities that are the hallmark of handcrafted products, are also a thing of the past. Because lath and plaster walls are thicker and formed as a single, seamless sheet, they are stronger and provide better sound insulation than modern plasterboard walls. Their main disadvantage is that they require more time and greater skill to install -- in other words, they would be prohibitively expensive today.

Repairing plaster walls with new plaster isn't that difficult, and the result is both stronger and more attractive than patching with plaster board. A properly repaired plaster wall will be as strong and seamless as the original while the plaster board patch will eventually show cracks around the edges. To learn more, read Repairing Historic Flat Plaster-Walls and Ceilings (Preservation Brief #1021).

Preservation Briefs

The National Park Service has commissioned a series of detailed documents dealing with the preservation of historic buildings -- commercial and residential. These cover a wide variety of topics and, although they are intended for the professional, they are written at a level that anyone can understand.

To make this information even more accessible, the Park Service has also prepared a collection of "Preservation Briefs" which summarize the information contained in the longer documents. These are listed below and can be downloaded.